Ironskin

by Tina Connolly

  Jane nodded, uncertain what this had to do with her leave of absence.

  “There was one tale of a lass who was tricked into staying with a ruined man,” he continued. “A human man, who had been cursed by the fey. A damaged man, nearly a beast. When this girl goes home for a visit, he bids her promise to stay only a week, for without her he will surely fade and die, return to the clutches of the fey that once claimed him.…”

  She could not fathom this despairing mood, but she liked it little. It poured from him like a poison, clutching at her throat, overpowering even her rage. From a distance she heard herself saying, “The circumstances are very alike, then. For I clearly see your beastly fangs and sharpened claws.”

  Mr. Rochart straightened. Laughter broke through the somber expression. “Go to your wedding,” he said. “I will not even hold you to the beast-man’s promise, make you swear to return to me.”

  “No?” said Jane.

  “No. I will fetch you home myself.”

  Chapter 5

  FEY BEAUTY

  Six days later, Jane sat on a pink tufted stool in Helen’s new sitting room, watching her sister flit back and forth. Fair Helen, lovely Helen, pink and white, unscarred Helen was dressed in nightclothes that looked like pre-war underclothes: a white chemise and bloomers, both heavily worked with eyelets and satin ribbons. Strange to think how sharply fashions had changed in one decade after seemingly centuries of head-to-toe layers. Dresses were sleeker and clingier by the day; glimpses of legs were displayed in the thinnest stockings you could afford (and oh, weren’t stockings dear these days as the factories all labored to make coal and steam technology work as efficiently as the bluepacks once had). Soon, Jane reflected, they would all wear nothing at all, and yet her head would still be swathed in mask and hat and veil.

  Helen’s copper-blond hair streamed free, her big brown eyes batted lashes at Jane. “The pearl combs or the tortoiseshell, Jane? Why won’t you make me choose?”

  “I thought you had chosen,” said Jane. She was seated next to the fireplace. The fire felt lovely, warm—too warm on her iron cheek. She turned her face away from the blaze. “The tortoiseshell, then,” she said. “To offset your hair.”

  Helen held one up, then dropped it on the rosewood vanity with a sigh. “No, the pearls, of course. It has to be pearls for a wedding. Come twist them in, will you?”

  Jane obeyed. She always obeyed Helen on the little things. It was easier that way. And yet no matter how many small battles she let Helen win, Helen fought just as hard on the big ones. And there met Jane’s temper, and called Jane stubborn, no matter how stubborn Helen was herself.

  “It’s a lovely mirror,” said Helen. “Not all wavy and silvered like ours was in the flat.”

  Jane twisted the copper-blond curls over her finger, carefully not looking at the mirror.

  Helen shifted, disrupting Jane’s hands. “And my rooms are lovely, don’t you think so? Did you see the fixtures for the gaslight? I selected them. All on my own.”

  “Hold still.”

  “Ouch,” said Helen, and her fingers flew in the way of Jane’s and back down. “I said, aren’t you fond of my rooms?”

  “I’m not sure why you’re here in these rooms before the wedding,” said Jane. “Since you asked.”

  “Don’t be prim,” said Helen. “Nobody here thinks anything of it.”

  “I passed two cousins and a maidservant this morning that thought something of it.”

  “Is that why you’ve been so cold to me all week?” said Helen. “You barely wished me a good birthday on Tuesday, and I am now eighteen and quite ridiculously adult.”

  “I have not been cold to you,” said Jane, nettled. “You’ve been busy with teas and ordering the servants to twist bows and make cakes. I’ve had errands to run. There are things I can only get in the city and not—” But she stopped short of criticizing her new home.

  “Not out in the sticks,” said Helen. “I understand our real trouble this week, don’t you worry. My simply divine new life will not come between us. You absolutely must give up that dreadful job and come live with us. Alistair is quite wealthy enough to feed another mouth, and I refuse to strand my sister in the remains of the war zone.”

  “A touching invitation, if melodramatic.”

  “Bother your sarcasm. You know what I mean. No one would think anything of it if you left that position.” Helen untied and retied the ribbon between her breasts. “Your Mr. Rochart is well known.”

  “Is that so?” said Jane. She tamped down a surge of interest in the subject and calmly tucked a manufactured curl into the pearl comb.

  “There is a mysterious air around him, that’s what I know,” said Helen. “Is it true he killed his first wife? Like the fey story of Bluebeard, you know, a forbidden locked room, and when the new wife enters it she finds all the dead wives hanging on the wall, and then”—she drew a finger across her throat with gruesome relish—“snick, she’s next.” Her eyes grew wide at her own imaginings. “Ooh, what if you’re in danger? Maybe you shouldn’t even go back to turn in your resignation. Stay here with me. They can ship your trunk.”

  “His wife died in the Great War,” Jane cut in. “Fey bomb, I believe.”

  “You believe. But you don’t know.”

  “I’ve seen more of him than you, and I don’t believe he’s a Bluebeard for one instant,” said Jane. “If he were, he would’ve advertised for someone beautif”—a gesture with her hand cutting off the word—“someone not me. Besides, I’ve been there for a month. Surely he would’ve chopped me into bits by now.”

  “Maybe he likes it to be a surprise when it happens,” said Helen thoughtfully. She cast around for more gossip. “Well, everyone knows his daughter has some sort of deficiency, so he keeps her locked up in the garret and no one ever sees her.”

  “Untrue,” said Jane. “She can go nearly everywhere in the house.”

  Helen pounced. “Nearly?”

  “Well, not the studio, but that’s off limits to everybody. And not the western wing, but you see it’s damaged.…” Jane trailed off, annoyed by Helen’s raised eyebrows. “Well, tell me the rest of the lies.”

  “Well, he had an affair with the Prime Minister’s wife, and that’s perfectly true and not lies at all, despite the fact that his cheeks are thin and he never pomades his hair. She met him at a dance last spring, and then she went down all the time to see him, and finally stayed down there for a month. And when she came back she was so refreshed and glowing, she looked ten years younger. The Prime Minister didn’t even have a clue, but everyone else was laughing and making cuckold horns behind his back. How’s that for facts?”

  Jane was cold inside at the thought. “Facts?” she managed. “You haven’t produced one. There, now your hair’s done. Let’s put you in the dress.”

  A knock on the door was followed by a maid backing in with a tea tray.

  Helen jumped up. “It’s not time for my dress,” she said. “First there’s morning tea, and then there’s you to get dressed and brushed and curled, because like it or not, I intend for you to be stunning. Two sisters, each more ravishing than the next! Men dropping dead at their feet!” She staggered dramatically to Jane, sank to her knees, and laid her head in Jane’s lap. “Now come eat something.”

  The tea was delectable—little cream-filled cakes, slices of crisp hothouse cucumbers, chocolates and sugared almonds piled in silver bowls. Helen replenished Jane’s plate faster than Jane could empty it. She cradled a warm cup of black tea and tried not to think of Mr. Rochart’s past affairs. Of course men had them. Eyeing her sister’s frothy nightclothes—of course people had them.

  Helen caught Jane’s eye. “Are you still thinking about me living here? I was perfectly well chaperoned, I promise you. Everyone knows I have no family. Where was I supposed to live?”

  “By yourself, in our flat,” said Jane. “I would’ve sent you money.” Most governesses lived with their families, of course. But Jane’s s
chool had refused to let an ironskin board there with the pupils. Helen’s family had agreed to let her share a flat with her sister so Jane wouldn’t have to live alone. But they had insisted it be a nearby flat, and in that part of town it had taken both girls’ scanty salaries to barely cover the rent. Though Jane could be cross, she suspected that deep down Helen was grateful not to have to live with her charges. Helen was never the mothering type.

  “In our empty flat I wouldn’t be chaperoned,” said Helen. “Positively much more scandalous, I assure you. Not to mention dull as dirt. No Jane to fuss over me and keep me from spending all my earnings on shoe buckles and fizzy wine. Why does it bother you?”

  “It doesn’t,” said Jane. If she probed deeply, it was probably because she felt guilty at leaving Helen to make her own decisions, manage her own life. Which was ridiculous. She’d only left Helen because Helen was leaving her. Well, that and the no-job thing. She’d been fired from the Norwood School over winter holidays, and hadn’t that just made them pleasant. “Forget I said anything.”

  Helen carefully took apart a cream cake and licked the insides out. “Can you remember when we used to have this sort of thing at home?”

  “Just,” said Jane. “Never every day though.” Father had died in the Indis of brain fever when Jane was eleven. Though the estate went to Charlie, there had been no family money left, except what Father had earned by his wits. After the dust and the debts had been settled, they were left with Mother’s tiny annuity. Still, even those times had had joy in them. Jane had seen the terrible conditions at the Norwood School, and that had just been as a teacher. If both her parents had died when Jane was eleven, she and Helen might have ended up as charity pupils at a school just like that, cold and hungry and at the mercy of typhus or polio. She could scarcely imagine how that Jane would have turned out—equally scarred, perhaps, equally angry.

  But when Jane was thirteen, the war started, and the poor-but-happy time grew fainter, thinner as the terror dragged on and on. Until one day on a battlefield her brother was gone and it was all over, all of it.

  After the war, after no Charlie, the estate went to the cousins, and Jane could not even keep Mother in her own home while she wasted away. All she could manage was huddling in Niklas’s foundry, lost and confused and trying to recover from a wound that would never heal.

  But down that road lay guilt and rage. Jane blinked back the orange fire that warmed her mask, doused it with thoughts of lakes and streams and pure cooling rain. She refused to be angry today.

  “No, not cream cakes every day,” Helen was saying, “unless Father sailed home with a windfall. But better than never. Better than grubbing in the gardens, and depending on neighbors’ charity, better than watching Mother take in tatwork and ruin her eyes by hoarded candlelight. Tatwork! Do you hear how old-fashioned that sounds? No one wears lace now. Mother wouldn’t know what to make of it, if she were here.” Her voice faltered on the final word.

  Jane touched Helen’s arm. “I know you miss her.”

  “And I’m sure you missed her in the city, after you left us,” said Helen, brightly, sharply, and Jane’s hand fell away. “But we’re not digging up unpleasant pasts today. Not for my wedding.” She dropped the decreamed cake sections to her saucer and smiled at Jane as if willing things to be all right. “Go on, eat, before I clean off this entire tray.” Helen’s fingers hovered over another slice. “But everyone says Silver Birch is enormous, one of those grand old fey-built estates. They probably have cream cakes out the ears. I suppose if he doesn’t chop you into bits, you can sneak me into some brilliant party there and we’ll make off with a bottle of sherry and an entire cake and go looking for all those slaughtered ex-wives.”

  “I don’t think he has parties,” said Jane. “They live simply.” In truth she suspected that money was tight, but she didn’t like the idea of gossiping about her employer. To assuage Helen she picked up a small triangle of rose-scented cake and tried to turn the subject away from Helen’s gruesome imaginings. “Won’t there be lots of food today? Were there problems with rations?”

  “Bosh,” said Helen, separating another cake slice. “The Great War is over, Jane, no matter what your country friends think. Rations simply don’t apply to someone like Alistair. Why do you think I picked him? Not just for his charm. People with money can save you, Jane—if they want to. But you take the bad with the good—you see how practical I have become, on my own—and today that means excess. He has the staff making mountains of cakes, chilling waterfalls of champagne. And really, it will be glorious, won’t it? But I can’t do this while people are watching.” She demonstrated what she couldn’t do by sucking pink cream filling from the sponge. “Anyway, that’s ages away. I still have an entire ceremony to get through without fainting, and so do you. Did you bring something nice to wear?”

  “My best,” said Jane, referring to the navy frock with short sleeves. “You’ve seen it.”

  Helen made a face. “You’ll wear something of mine.” She raised a cream-smeared finger, forestalling Jane’s protests. “You will. We’re the same size in everything but shoes. If you had a blond wig then from behind we’d look the same. Not even Alistair could tell us apart, I’m sure of it. You could take my place today, and wouldn’t that be a laugh? I wonder what he’d say when he found out.”

  Jane’s protest subsided under this flight of fancy. Even knowing Helen’s sartorial tastes, the dress was a small battle, and the next point was a bigger one. “All right,” she said. “As long as I can wear my veil.”

  * * *

  The wedding was beautiful, the reception long. There were plenty of the little cream-filled cakes, but Jane didn’t see Helen eat anything at all. She moved through the party in her slim white frock like a ghost, her honey-hued hair in coiled curls contained by the pearl combs. “Fey beauty,” croaked an old auntie next to Jane, and then she was rewarded by hostile stares from the ladies around her. That was a saying from long ago. Not today.

  Jane herself felt quite odd and otherworldly. Helen had insisted on fixing her veil so it was short and gauzy, not the long swathes of fabric Jane normally used. If Jane had had her normal veil she would have adjusted the layers to cover the front of her borrowed dress. Helen’s dressmakers had been busy providing her with a whole new wardrobe, and this was one of those dresses.

  “But I can’t stand it,” Helen had said. “I don’t care how chic the color is, it washes me out. I wore it to Mrs. Wilmot’s tea party last week and her daughter Annabella just bumped right into me, in front of everyone. And then drawled, ‘Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t see you; you blended into the wallpaper.’ When their wallpaper is clearly pewter and not dark silver. Of course she’s just jealous because she wanted Alistair, not that that makes it any easier. Alistair assured me I was more beautiful than anyone except the Prime Minister’s wife. But I’m never wearing this again.”

  The dress was a silvery grey silk, shot through with silver and jet threads that shimmered in the light. It very nearly matched her iron mask, though Jane could not decide if this was a good thing or not. The dress was in the very newest style—slinky and close-fitting, gathered at one hip and falling in a swish to the tops of Jane’s T-strap shoes. The décolletage was low—not as indecent as some of Helen’s dresses, but quite low enough for Jane. Helen had had to lend her a tight and low-cut slip that would work underneath.

  The dress might have not worked well with Helen’s coloring, but it worked splendidly with Jane’s. Helen curled Jane’s dark brown hair with the tongs, then made her leave it down around her shoulders, tucking only the white fey-blighted lock up into the combs and veil. The dark silver transformed her pale, peaked look into something luminous, into a creature who was marble-skinned and elegant. It was the most beautiful dress Jane had ever worn, and she was very nearly in love with it, even if she felt an utter fraud.

  As she came downstairs and found a seat outside under the erected tents, she noticed people looking at her. Relatives
, servants—people who had seen her around the house all week suddenly stared at her as if for the first time. There was a brief moment where men looked at her as if she were a girl.

  And then one by one they looked closer at her veiled face and remembered, or saw, the ironskin beneath. They discerned who she was, and they dismissed her.

  But not all of them figured it out immediately. And not all of the men stopped looking at the silver lines of her dress.

  Jane felt quite light-headed as she watched the wedding, struck by the idea that this might be how it was supposed to be. How even now she might wake up from her terrible dreams of the war and be happily sitting here whole and unveiled, watching her younger sister marry. Mother would be next to her, Charlie on the other side, the tall strong man she had never gotten to meet. Even in her imagination, the clock would not turn back far enough to put her father on the bench with them.

  But it would turn back to that dreadful morning in the last month of the war. It would turn back to that dawn, and somehow she and Charlie were the lucky ones who made it home, who made it out of that war alive, until now they sit here on the bench as the minister recites Helen’s vows, and Charlie nudges her and whisper-recites the tale of Helen writing a love letter to their old clergyman in her ear, and they try not to giggle. For now Helen is saying the final words, and then it is all over, and Alistair is kissing the bride, and Mother clutches her hand, because she has promised Helen she will not cry.

  They are done, they are smiling. And Jane turns to watch Alistair and Helen go solemnly down the aisle, and she should be looking over Charlie’s shoulder, her chin should be touching his arm.